U.S. links Yemen clan
to Sept. 11 and East Africa attacksFebruary 14, 2002

NEW YORK,
The family phone of an al-Qaida suspect who killed himself Wednesday to
avoid capture by Yemen’s security police had been used to relay orders
to the Sept. 11 hijackers and the terrorist cells responsible for the bombings
of two U.S. embassies in East Africa and the USS Cole, U.S. intelligence
officials told NBC News on Thursday.

SSAMEER AL-HADA, a Yemeni
student and suspected al-Qaida courier, blew himself up with a hand grenade
Wednesday outside the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, as security forces tried
to pull him in for questioning.

U.S. intelligence officials,
speaking on condition of anonymity, said that intercepts of al-Qaida communications
indicate that the al-Hada family phone was used to relay messages to the
embassy bombers, the USS Cole bombers and the Sept. 11 hijackers.

The information tends to
corroborate the belief that the al-Hada clan served as a “super cell” for
al-Qaida in Yemen, providing key communications support and personnel for
its jihad against the United States.

“Yemen has been a trading
house, a conduit for al-Qaida,” said a U.S. investigator. U.S. officials say they
can link the clan to the Sept. 11 attacks, the August 1998 bombing of U.S.
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the October 2000 bombing attack on
the destroyer USS Cole in Aden harbor. The United States previously has
accused the al-Qaida network, led by exiled Saudi Osama bin Laden, of all
three attacks.

FAMILY AFFAIRThe phone in question was
listed to Ahmad Mohammad ali al-Hada, the patriarch of the clan and a man
described by U.S. officials as “a prominent al-Qaida member who is believed
to have been involved in the Cole bombing.” He remains at large and is
being sought by U.S. and Yemeni authorities.

These officials added that
they believe other family members are intimately involved in the al-Qaida
war against America. Another of Ahmed’s sons, Najeeb, is thought to have
died in Afghanistan during explosives training at an al-Qaida camp in 1999.

A son-in-law is named as
one of the Sept. 11 hijackers: Khalid al-Midhar, allegedly the ringleader
of the al-Qaida cell that flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
Another son-in-law, Mustafa Abdulkader, is among the 16 men listed as wanted
by the FBI in its terror alert earlier this week. He, too, remains at large.

THE SWITCHBOARDThe central position the
al-Hada family allegedly occupied in al-Qaida’s Yemen network came to light
Wednesday after 25-year-old Sameer al-Hada, 25, killed himself while being
chased by Yemeni security forces. He had been stopped for questioning as
he was trying to flee from Yemen. The Yemen Observer, a local newspaper,
reported Thursday that a gunfight ensued before Sameer was surrounded by
police. He then threatened police with a hand grenade.

The grenade exploded in his
hand, killing him instantly. No police were injured in the incident, which
happened in a Sana’a suburb during the early evening.

U.S. officials speculate
that Sameer likely committed suicide to avoid revealing more about his
family’s role in al-Qaida communications. For several years, U.S. investigators
and prosecutors involved with the investigation of the East Africa embassy
bombings have referred to a “Yemen switchboard” for al-Qaida, something
U.S. officials now confirm was actually the phone of Ahmad al-Hada.

Transcripts from the New
York trial of four men eventually convicted of bombing the two U.S. embassies
in Africa showed that al-Hada’s number — 011-967-1-200-578 — figured prominently
in al-Qaida operations. The transcript indicates that bin Laden, or at
least someone using his satellite phone, as well as bin Laden deputy Mohammed
Atef and several of the embassy bombers, called Ahmad al-Hada’s number
in Yemen to relay information.

As far as the Cole bombing,
a U.S. investigator said the phone was used by the bombers to “put everything
together.”

And in the Sept. 11 hijacking,
U.S. officials told NBC News that the hijackers left messages on the Yemen
phone for others to pick up.

There are numerous references
in the trial record regarding the use of Yemen as a terrorist switchboard: In the days before
the August 1998 embassy bombings, 12 phone calls were placed by the bombing
co-conspirators — including two calls using bin Laden’s own satellite phone
— to a phone number in Yemen. Two of the calls, the prosecutors say, were
placed by one of the bombers in the minutes before he and others left a
safe house in suburban Nairobi to blow up the embassy in the Kenyan capital.
The information was available in late 1998.

Other entries in the trial
record show that an August 1998 Scotland Yard search of a London apartment
used by bin Laden lieutenant Khalid al-Fawwaz turned up mobile phone records
from Kenya showing numerous calls from al-Fawwaz to the same numbers in
Yemen during 1995-96.

The embassy bombing trial
led to the convictions of four men on murder charges in the two bombings
on Aug. 7, 1998, which killed 224 people — 213 in Nairobi, including 12
Americans, and 11 people in Tanzania. More than 4,500 people suffered injuries
in the attacks.